Fenton Crackshell
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| Fenton Crackshell | |
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Fenton Crackshell, as seen in DuckTales. |
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| First appearance | DuckTales' five-part serial Super DuckTales |
| Created by | The Walt Disney Company |
| Voiced by | Hamilton Camp |
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| Notable aliases | GizmoDuck |
Fenton Crackshell is a fictional character created by the Walt Disney company and voiced by Hamilton Camp.
He first appeared on DuckTales (to be more exact, the TV movie Super DuckTales, which was later split up into a five-part episode) as a bean counter (literally), but he quit that job to work for Scrooge McDuck as his accountant. Although he is not stupid, Fenton's ambitious ideas and hasty decision-making create serious problems for his boss. He is doggedly determined to make amends each time by any means necessary which can create even more complications until he ultimately succeeds, although this requires a large amount of patience with him.
Presumably lacking an education in business and accounting, he tends to take things literally. For example, when Scrooge referred to his large cache of funds as "liquid assets", Fenton has the entire money bin emptied into a nearby lake. Fortunately, he then suggested that his employer "freeze his assets" which inspires McDuck to have the lake frozen solid, then transport the ice to a secure area and recover the money.
Later on, Fenton finds a robot suit called GizmoDuck made by Gyro Gearloose. The code word to activate it is "Blatherskite", a word which Gyro assumes no normal person would use. (Unbeknownst to him, one of Fenton's most frequently used sayings was "blathering blatherskite".) As fate would have it, Fenton wanders too close to the suit and utters his favorite expression, thus gaining a secret identity as a superhero. From then on, Fenton always uses "blathering blatherskite" to become Gizmoduck, despite only needing the second word-it's possible that he doesn't realize he doesn't have to say the entire phrase.
The only characters privileged to know that Fenton is GizmoDuck are Scrooge McDuck and Fenton's mother, whom he refers to as M'ma. His mother usually wears a bathrobe and watches television in a rundown trailer-home. Fenton is in love with Gandra Dee, Scrooge's bean factory receptionist. As Fenton, he is Scrooge's accountant, but as GizmoDuck, he is Scrooge's security guard and personal bodyguard.
Fenton also has the surprisingly useful, almost superhuman natural ability to count a large number of objects instantaneously. For instance, that ability allowed him to instantly count the number of shotgun pellets McDuck fired to scare him away in Super DuckTales (because of the gunfire, this scene was cut from syndicated broadcasts). The billionaire, amazed at this improbable skill, then challenged him to determine the value of a collection of coins he flipped in the air and Fenton was accurate to the penny. At the climax of the film, it was Fenton's counting ability, and not Gizmoduck's armor, that saved the day; he challenged a massively powerful alien supercomputer, the Master Electronic Leader ("You may call me M-MEL") to a counting contest. Fenton quickly began to pull ahead, causing MEL's circuits to start to overheat in exasperation. Fenton then challenged him to count the number of bolts in a jar. After MEL gave its answer, Fenton responded with a grin, "Sorry MEL, these are nuts, not bolts. You lose!" The sheer shock of this defeat drove MEL insane, caused it to explode, and began a chain reaction which eventually led to the destruction of the entire robotic planet.
Fenton has appeared as a guest star on Darkwing Duck on occasion as Launchpad McQuack's old friend from Duckburg as both identities. He appears more as GizmoDuck than himself, and is a superhero rival of Darkwing's.
Originally, GizmoDuck was intended to be an artificially intelligent robot (and indeed in the series Scrooge originally intended to have a security guard that was a robot designed by Gyro until he realized "it didn't have a brain"), but the idea was later changed to the current one, akin to Iron Man or RoboCop.
Strangely, Fenton never appeared in the DuckTales comic book series, despite continuous letters asking that he appear. He did, however, appear in the comic stories printed in Disney Adventures, mostly showing up in Darkwing Duck stories, as well as the DuckTales video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
GizmoDuck (along with Bubba and an unused character named Alien Duck) were created by Tad Stones around the same time Chip 'N' Dale were added to Rescue Rangers. Gizmo Duck was originally called Robo Duck, which coincidentally is his name in Japan. [1]
[edit] Abilities
The GizmoDuck suit itself balances on one tire and is capable of producing any kind of device that a cartoon could possibly produce. Akin to the many devices used by Inspector Gadget, these include anything from weapons (mostly non-lethal) to tools. Many of these devices are button-activated.
The suit contains a built-in video screen, which Fenton uses for communication, although his television-addicted mother finds another use for it after the two discover that the suit can be deactivated with a television remote control.
As Fenton doesn't quite know how the suit works (especially in the earlier episodes), one last-ditch battle tactic that he relies on is to push all of his buttons, which has very unpredictable (but humorous) results, usually ending in victory (although leaving Fenton battered and bruised). Hence this technique can be considered double-edged.
[edit] Translations
- In the Bulgarian translation of the series, GizmoDuck is named Робопат, which in Bulgarian means "Roboduck", and the password for activating the GizmoDuck suit is Гръм и мълнии!!! (which means Thunder and bolts!!!).
- In the Swedish translation of the series, Fenton's last name is changed to Spadrig, GizmoDuck is named GizmoQuack, the password for activating the his suit is Krankelfnatt (which is a nonsense word that doesn't really mean anything), and Fenton's tag line was Brackelikrankelfnatt. In later episodes, the word was changed to Krackelibrankelfnatt, this change went largely unnoticed however.
- In the Hungarian translation, Fenton's frequent exclamation is A fűzfán fütyülő rézangyalát! (which roughly equals Copper angel whistling on a willow, not having any particular meaning), and the password for the GizmoDuck suit is rézangyal (copper angel).
- In Spanish GizmoDuck was called Pato Aparato which is a close literal translation; but the password for the suit was Por las plumas de mi abuelo! literally meaning, By my grandfather's feathers!
- The German dub has him say Ausgetrockneter Ententümpel literally meaning Dehydrated Duckpond. He is usually referred to as Krach-Bumm-Ente, meaning Crash-Boom-Duck; however, in Darkwing Duck (which aired earlier in Germany), the more literal translation Dingsbums Duck was used. Later in the Darkwing Duck series, he is called TurboDuck.
- In Portuguese GizmoDuck was called RoboPato (RoboDuck, an allusion to RoboCop), and the password was Baboseiras (baboseira means "folly, nonsense", but is an uncommon word, close to Gyro's intentions); Fenton's exclamation was just Baboseiras baboseiras.
- In Polish Fenton's name was Cyfron Liczypiórek (literally meaning Digiter Feathercounter) and GizmoDuck was called RoboKwak (RoboQuack), and the password was Bamboli bambolak.
- In Dutch (The Netherlands), GizmoDuck is called 'Roboduck' and the password to his suit is 'Blabberdelabberkak' (presumably a pun on the word 'belabberd', which means terrible/useless, and 'kak', a crude word for excrement.).
- In the Danish translation, GizmoDuck is called GizmoAnd (a direct translation since and means duck), while the password for the suit is Skvaldrende ordskvalder (a close translation would be blabbering verbiage).
- In the Italian dub, Fenton Crackshell name is Fenton Paperconchiglia (Papero in Italian means Duck. Literally the surname means Duckshell) and his password to transform himself is Incantesimo which means Spell. GizmoDuck's name in the Italian dub is RoboPap.
- In Turkish dubs he has two names : "Metalkafa" (older one when Duck Tales was aired in TRT, which means "Metalhead") and Gizmo-ördek (translated "Gizmoduck" literally). His real name is Fenton Kafadançatlak, which literally means "person who lost a few screws of himself" a word is used to describe crazy people in Turkish language (and interestingly close to his real name "Crackshell").
- In Russian, GizmoDuck is called Утко-робот Гизмо (Duck-robot Gizmo) and in different episodes he had a couple of different keywords to activate the suit (which is probably a product of work of different translators). They were Beliberda-beliberden (can be translated as balderdashing balderdash), Boltun i spletnik (chatterer and tattler) and a few other variants.
- In Japanese, Gizmo Duck is known as Robo Duck, which coincidentally is Tad Stones's original name for him.
- In the Finnish translation, the character is called Turboankka (Turbo Duck).
[edit] External links
| Darkwing Duck view • talk • edit |
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| Characters | |
| Main Characters | Darkwing Duck/Drake Mallard | Gosalyn Mallard | Launchpad McQuack | Honker Muddlefoot |
| Villains | NegaDuck | Megavolt | Bushroot | Quackerjack | The Liquidator | F.O.W.L. | Splatter Phoenix | Taurus Bulba | Hammerhead, Hoof and Mouth | Dr. Fossil | Phineas Sharp |
| Minor Characters | Herb, Binkie and Tank Muddlefoot | J. Gander Hooter | Vladimir Goudenov Grizzlikof | Gizmoduck | Morgana Macawber | Stegmutt | Dr. Sarah Bellum | DarkWarrior Duck |
| Other | |
| Misc | St. Canard | Calisota | Darkly Dawns the Duck | Characters |
| Media | Episodes | DVDs | Darkwing Duck video game |
| See also | Tad Stones | DuckTales | Double-O-Duck | The Disney Afternoon |
